Which States Produce The Most Ironmen And Ironwomen?

In keeping with my current trend of statistically analyzing the results of past Ironman races, I began to wonder which states produced the most Ironmen and Ironwomen per capita. Well, I wonder no longer. I looked at about 60,000 American triathletes who raced in Ironman and half-Ironman races from 2010-2017 and broke them down by which state they came from. (This is just a subset of all Ironman racers, and is by no means complete).

The below table shows each state’s ranking, with their ratio of Ironmen-to-population. A ratio of more than 1 means they produced more Ironmen than expected based on their population (nice job, Hawaii), whereas a ratio of less than 1 means they produced fewer (looking at you, North Dakota).

State

# Ironman and half-Ironmen

Population

Ratio

Hawaii

1,613

1,428,557

5.92

California

23,897

39,250,017

3.18

District of Columbia

306

681,170

2.35

Utah

1,362

3,051,217

2.34

Arizona

2,318

6,931,071

1.75

Colorado

1,510

5,540,545

1.43

Vermont

150

624,594

1.27

Washington

1,683

7,288,000

1.2

Nevada

662

2,940,058

1.17

Maryland

1,220

6,016,447

1.06

Virginia

1,653

8,411,808

1.03

Illinois

2,361

12,801,539

0.96

Alaska

132

741,894

0.93

New York

3,357

19,745,289

0.89

New Hampshire

222

1,334,795

0.87

Idaho

280

1,683,140

0.87

Oregon

674

4,093,465

0.86

Connecticut

570

3,576,452

0.83

Michigan

1,550

9,928,300

0.82

Florida

3,121

20,612,439

0.79

New Jersey

1,333

8,944,469

0.78

Massachusetts

903

6,811,779

0.69

Delaware

115

952,065

0.64

Texas

3,369

27,862,596

0.63

Pennsylvania

1,341

12,784,227

0.55

New Mexico

211

2,081,015

0.53

Indiana

666

6,633,053

0.52

Montana

94

1,042,520

0.47

North Carolina

856

10,146,788

0.44

Maine

107

1,331,479

0.42

Wisconsin

462

5,778,708

0.42

Rhode Island

83

1,056,426

0.41

Georgia

711

10,310,371

0.36

Wyoming

37

585,501

0.33

Ohio

664

11,614,373

0.3

Tennessee

375

6,651,194

0.29

Minnesota

301

5,519,952

0.28

Missouri

329

6,093,000

0.28

Louisiana

216

4,681,666

0.24

Kentucky

189

4,436,974

0.22

Iowa

132

3,134,693

0.22

South Carolina

200

4,961,119

0.21

Oklahoma

150

3,923,561

0.2

Kansas

111

2,907,289

0.2

South Dakota

23

865,454

0.14

Nebraska

46

1,907,116

0.13

Alabama

112

4,863,300

0.12

Mississippi

61

2,988,726

0.11

Arkansas

61

2,988,248

0.11

West Virginia

35

1,831,102

0.1

North Dakota

11

757,952

0.08

Alright, now what else can we look at? How about gender distribution of triathletes from each state? Not a problem. Louisiana, it looks like you’ve got some work to do. Don’t overlook California, too – this state produces the most triathletes by far, and is still suffering from a 64/36 male/female split. We’ve actually written another article on the trend towards more women competing in Ironman races, but it appears that the Golden State hasn’t yet gotten the memo.